The resources in the present application are digital data that is used frequently, relative static but still evolving, e.g. a dictionary, a catalog, a name list, a directory, etc. An enterprise may have various resources used by different computing systems, and these resources are copied and distributed so that they can be rapidly retrieved on local computers. For example, a large enterprise may need to maintain a dictionary of frequently used terms in its business. The dictionary needs to be distributed to all the employee's computers so that the spell-checker software can correctly recognize these terms. The dictionary is an evolving resource, which is updated in a low frequency, e.g. weekly or monthly. This enterprise may also want to have versioning control on the dictionary. At the same time, the same enterprise may maintain a standard computer system configuration information. The configuration information needs to be distributed to all the employee's computers so that all the computers' configuration are correct and comply with the enterprise's policies. The configuration information is also an evolving resource. Currently each evolving resource has its own distribution channels, either online or offline, and has an extra development, deployment, and maintenance cost.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,405,219 discloses a method and system for automatically updating the version of a set of files stored in content servers, but it transfers the entire files over the network for replication, and this will occupy a lot of network bandwidth.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,272,536 discloses a system and method for the distribution of codes and data. It describes a system and method for distributing software applications and data to many thousands of clients over a network. The US patent's technical solution does not have any intermediate servers for the distribution, and therefore can not share the load of a server, making users unable to be distributed quickly with codes and data. In addition, this US patent can only distinguish old and new versions so as to conduct a linear version management, and can not support an entire resource versioning tree structure.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,182,117 discloses a method and apparatus for workgroup information replication. The apparatus provides an ability to use an existing store-and-forward messaging network such as an electronic mail system to replicate data between computer sites. In the technical solution of this US patent, changes to existing objects/resources are treated as new objects, but this does not facilitate the tracking of the update of particular objects/resources.
In the above mentioned conventional techniques, there are defects that the occupied channel bandwidth is excessive, the costs for development, deployment and maintenance are higher, the ability for controlling version updates is weaker, and the replicating of resource patches and the controlling of version updates can not be integrated.